Recently I wrote a small piece about memories evoked by
finding a sixty-year-old penny. I think
it is interesting to discover the things that trigger memories. Several years ago, Reader’s Digest published
an article about the memories and images evoked by our sense of smell. The article noted that some smells call up
the strongest of memories. I recall that
one man picked up his father’s smoking jacket long after his father had died
and memories of his father rushed back.
Last week I was cooking some hamburgers on the grill and
decided to fry up some onions for them.
As I was frying the onions, memories more than 70 years old suddenly
were there. When my brother and I were
small boys, there was a little diner in our hometown in northern Oklahoma. As I recall it, it was somewhat like the
diners popular many years ago, made from a railroad dining car, but I don’t
know if this was the case. It was
rumored that an “old Greek” owned it. I
don’t know the country of origin of the man behind the counter, but he was old
(or so it seemed to a 6 year old) and he did have an accent. The only items I recall coming from that
diner were hamburgers—delicious and inexpensive. So many years have gone by that I don’t know
if they were 5 cents apiece/12 for 50 cents or 10 cents apiece/12 for a
dollar. They were fried on a grill; the
buns were heated under an old chipped enamel wash pan with an improvised wooden
handle, but the thing that made them so special was the fried onions. Now, 70+ years later I can still smell them
and I have a vivid picture of the place.
It was long ago, but the sweet memories remain.
For years in my hometown there was a small restaurant called
simply “Tucker’s”. The restaurant was
wedged between the First National Bank and the F. W. Woolworth store. Mr. Tucker made the best chili in town or so
I thought. It was red, greasy and full
of flavor. You had to use a bunch of
saltine crackers to soak up the grease, but the chili stuck with you all
day. When I make chili, that restaurant
pops into my mind along with its 5-cent cup of coffee served in a thick mug and
you could get several refills—enough to get you through lunch and a piece of
pie.
Men my age may well recall the astringent lotion made from
witch hazel and used in barbershops for many years. I went to the same barbershop until I was 18
years old. I even worked in that
barbershop shining shoes, sweeping the place and refilling the various hair
tonic bottles as well as restocking towels and neck papers. The barbershop was located in the basement of
the First National Bank building and did a landslide business since there was
only one other barbershop in town.
Farmers came to town on Saturdays to get a haircut and a shave. When the barber was finished with both, there
generally was a liberal application of witch hazel or you could get a fancy
tonic for a little more. Let me smell
witch hazel and I am in that barbershop.
Three other things stick out in my mind when I smell certain
things—freshly popped popcorn, hotdogs and oiled wooden floors.
Saturday nights in my early years were generally spent with
my mother’s parents. My folks, my
brother and I would go to my grandparent’s home to listen to the popular radio
shows on their big Philco radio. My
grandfather would always pop popcorn in an old black pan. None of this fancy Orville Redenbacher stuff
with “Lite Butter”, but the real stuff—popcorn not too long off the cob. It was still full of moisture and it popped
into big fluffy white kernels. And it
was drenched in real butter and served in newspaper cones that my brother and I
rolled up. If you have never had it this
way, you just don’t know what real popcorn is.
After 70+ years, I can still smell and taste my grandfather’s popcorn
every time I get a whiff of freshly popped popcorn.
There was man in our town by the name of Goldy Buttrey. Goldy owned a gas station and he also owned a
hotdog stand that sat out in front of the gas station. You know the kind, shiny metal with a large
umbrella and what I euphemistically call “dirty water hotdogs”. Goldy brought the foot long hotdog to our
little town shortly after World War II. He
would open up the pan where the hotdogs were steaming and serve one upon a long
bun—all for a quarter I recall. Now,
when I stop at a hotdog stand in Washington, D.C. or other places, that little
hotdog stand in Oklahoma comes to mind.
Oiled wooden floors almost don’t exist any more—too much of
a fire hazard. But when I was in grade
school, the janitor used a sweeping compound composed of scented oil and
sawdust. This sweeping compound kept
down the dust, but it also kept the floors oiled to protect them and prevent
them from drying out. The fact that they
were a fire hazard didn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind in the late 1930s and
early 1940s. Now if I am in an old
building that has been “recycled” for some modern commercial use, I often can
pick up the faint smell of oiled wooden floors and I can just see our school
janitor broadcasting the sweeping compound on the floor just before he begins
sweeping it for the day.
One last thought. All
the years I can remember my maternal grandfather, Psalter Goodwin Barnes, he
smoked Prince Albert pipe tobacco and Prince Edward cigars. Both were inexpensive but they were what he
could afford. When I smell pipe smoke or
when I smoke a cigar, I think of my grandfather, carefully filling his pipe or
clipping the end off his cigar, putting it into a holder and lighting a
match. To this day I love that
smell. I can see my grandfather setting
in his rocker on the front porch with a wreath of smoke above his head.
So the next time you smell something familiar, stop and
think about what it reminds you of. Take
a journey in your mind and savor those sweet smells.
No comments:
Post a Comment